


Gordon's failed world record attempt

by LJneko



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Gen, Speedrun!Gordon, also! this is a silly au fanfic so it will be: silly, first time writing so sorry for the mistakes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LJneko/pseuds/LJneko
Summary: Gordon's a speedrunner with a world record to beat, and he's not planning on letting a group of idiots slow him down.
Comments: 30
Kudos: 138





	1. Something’s wrong with the AI, chat

**Author's Note:**

> I got the HLVRAI server to blame for this Speedrunner AU.  
> Also sorry for the fact that speedrun Gordon is kind of a massive douche, he's just not used to you know. The npcs being self aware.  
> In a bit of a hiatus for now while I try to get over a bit of a writer's block! Sorry!

“Alright, I think I got everything set up right this time. We’re ready to start!”

Gordon paces around the small room, waiting for the hydraulic door to open so he could begin the run. He takes off his lab coat, tying it around his waist so it doesn’t get caught up on anything. Quiet whispers fill the air around him, thousands of questions and comments trying to grab at his attention.

“I don’t think we are doing any challenges,” he replies, focusing on the clearer whispers. “Just aiming for world record, right? Do you guys want a challenge run?” The whispers grow louder and more frantic. Gordon couldn’t get a concise answer from these ones. It’s very hard to understand them when they aren’t synchronized.

The door’s locks begin to move. That’s his cue. He readies himself, and, before the scientists in the next room could even think of greeting him, launches himself at top speeds past the next four rooms. Now, to wait for the guard to open the d-

“hey.”

Gordon turns toward the voice. That was definitely not the whispers. “Huh?”

A guard approaches him slowly. Gordon eyes the door behind him. (Seven, six, five…) He has no time for whatever this interaction is supposed to be.

“can I see your passport?”

Gordon does a double take. See his… what? (Three, two, one.) Wait. He has no time for this. He hears the door behind him click, and rushes out without giving the guard an answer. He almost messed this up.

As he flies through the next halls, he hears something vaguely like “your dick’s out-” behind him. He’ll just check later; it’s probably the chat playing pranks again. Gordon jumps down the elevator shaft and heads to the locker room.

Gordon flies through the next set of halls, ignoring another scientist trying to greet him. They sure are a lot more talkative in this new version, huh? He finds the locker room door, and jumps through before it’s finished opening. Wait, there wasn’t supposed to be a scientist in h-

“Ah, hello, Gordon!”

Crash.

The whispers all laugh at him, forming a single, booming voice. What even happened? Gordon sits up, glasses across the room and his head aching. Shit. He's losing time.

“Gordon, I know you’re late, but calm down a little!” Gordon looks at his glasses. He’d waste time trying to get them back. He gets up and jumps directly into the HEV suit. “Gordon-” Oh, right. This new version has a super long animation when you put on the HEV suit, right? That’s going to be a few precious seconds... wasn’t there a trick to skip this? “Gordon!”

Gordon looks up at the scientist. What is he on about? Did the devs add a tutorial character or something? “What is it?”

“What’s the matter with you, Gordon? You’re looking a little… intense? ...Are you alright?” Gordon doesn’t answer, just stares blankly at the man in front of him, who slowly walks over to Gordon’s glasses, picks them up, and cleans the dirty lenses on his lab coat. (Five, four, three…) “You’re late, yes, but you’ll need to stay calm in the test chamber!” (Two, one.) Gordon regains control over his body.

“Here’s your glasses, G-” Gordon snatches the glasses from the scientist’s hand and runs off.

“...Good luck in the chamber...” Gordon hears as he blasts off.

\---

Gordon slaps the button to call the elevator as quickly as possible, then relaxes a little. Truth is, those little moments where there’s nothing he can do to progress but wait are always refreshing. The elevator slowly comes up, and as Gordon prepares to jump down the shaft he sees a guard. A guard that isn’t supposed to be there, just like the scientist back at the lockers. Whatever, as long as he doesn’t affect his time.

“yo dude, why’d you run off like that? you can’t be running around here without your passport”

Great. It’s the passport guy.

The doors open, and Gordon immediately tries to squeeze past the guard, sighing when he realises that he cannot. “Dude, move. I have a test to get to!”

“why are you shouting? you- you look real nervous dude. are you here to-”

“Move. Now. I don’t have time for this!”

“well then where’s your passport?”

“I don’t have- I don’t need a passport!” Gordon rubs the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. The whispers devolve half into laughter, half into the letter f. “Will you let me go if I promise to get you my passport later?”

“uhh sure but i’ll have to follow you around.”

“Why?”

“gotta make sure you don’t try and steal anything.”

Alright. This might as well happen. Gordon sighs. “Fine. Get out of the way and you can follow all you want, I guess!”

The guard moves after another second of staring at Gordon. Good. Maybe if he hurries, he can make up the lost time. Gordon gets into the elevator shaft, and drops down to the other floor. The guard, somehow, follows after him. The new AI’s really advanced, huh.

“dude are you trying to run off again” The guard says, trying to catch up to a Gordon that is steadily gaining speed.

Gordon doesn’t answer.

“dude-” The guard says, before Gordon turns a corner and stops hearing him completely. Ignore the whispers, Gordon. Ignore the whispers. Lose him before chat gets too attached.

Gordon ran through a few more rooms, ignored yet another scientist that tried to talk to him, and finally got to the airlock where two other scientists waited, ready to open the test chamber. He sits down to wait.

God, this part is always way slower than it has any right to be. Might as well use this time to get some info out of the whispers.

“Hey chat, what’s with the passport guy? Is that from the remaster? I’m gonna have to find a way to skip him in future runs…”

The whispers shifted into some variation of “nope”, “glitch?”, or “no idea”. Huh.

(Three, two, one.)

The door slowly opens, and Gordon doesn’t rush for once. The test sequence is another event that takes its sweet t-

The guard from before stood inside, staring straight into Gordon.

“How the-”


	2. They nerfed our exploits, chat

“what are you doing up there?”

“I have to be up here to initiate the experiment.”

The guard climbs the stairs that lead to the small platform Gordon is standing on.

“Please don’t come up here-”

Too late. The guard is now standing face to face with Gordon. Whatever, as long as he doesn’t mess up the timing. (Six, five, four,)

“what’s this do” The guard says, pressing a random button. Gordon ignores him. It’s not like any of the other buttons were programmed to do anything. (Three, two, one.) Gordon hits the rotor button, then jumps down the ladder to wait for the sample. The guard follows.

“Gordon? Do you see the next step?” one of the scientists shouts from a window above Gordon, only to be ignored. Time to check in with the whispers and wait for another long scene to pass. “TOMMY!” The guard shouts. Apparently the scientist’s name is Tommy. The whispers repeat it over and over, like parrots.

“Hi! Can Gordon hear us? He’s not really answering!” Tommy shouts. The guard approaches Gordon, poking him on the shoulder. “yo, dude, drop the headphones, that’s so rude.” Great. Now the whispers are booing him for being rude to the NPCs. Gordon gives Tommy a half-hearted thumbs up.

“He’s right, Gordon! Take out the fucking headphones, are you taking this seriously?!” Shouts yet another scientist. Dear god, this version’s AI really is a pain in the ass. Gordon takes out his headphones and drops them on the floor next to him, taking a deep breath.

“Sorry chat, no more song recs, the NPCs decided that I gotta start paying more attention to the plot!” Gordon says, throwing his hands up dramatically.

The (now three!) scientists on the window glance at each other. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence before the sample finally starts to come up. Gordon readies himself. (Eight, seven, six,)

“Now, do it VERY carefully, Gordon!” (Five, four, three,) “Slower than molasses drips-” (Two, one.)

Gordon rams the sample into the core at full speed.

“GORDON,” the scientists scream in unison. His vision turns green.

\---

Crash.

Apparently they fixed that exploit, too.

Gordon tumbles back down the wall after having flung himself directly into the (now closed) window. Between the fixed exploits and NPC problem, this version will likely be a lot more annoying to speedrun. He gets up, and runs back through the way he came, flying past the next few rooms with ease.

“Are you that motherfucker that fucked up this whole experiment?”

Gordon ignores the scientist, jumping over a corpse and running straight to the next door-

Crash.

The whispers go wild.

“Great! Apparently the whole facility is either dead or insane now!” The scientist gets up from the spot he was sitting and walks over to Gordon. A pop-up in the UI reads: “THE ENTIRE PARTY MUST BE PRESENT BEFORE CONTINUING. [2/5]”

“The entire WHAT?” Gordon shouts.

“The whole facility, dipshit! Look around you!” He motions to the havoc around them, to the sparking computers and lifeless corpses.

Gordon rubs the bridge of his nose , sighing. “I wasn’t talking to you.” He takes a moment to process the pop-up, foot tapping on the floor rhythmically, before he stops and looks back up at the door. “Who’s- Party?!? Is it the passport guy? How do I even know WHO’s in my party?!?”

“hey” Oh. Speak of the devil. He walks over to the two. “you really fucked that up huh”

[3/5], the UI notifies. One more down. Maybe the other party members are Tommy and the locker room guy, Gordon thinks. He turns to the guard. “Have you seen Tommy?”

“huh? no” Great. This is fine. This is just fine. Gordon sits down and sighs, bouncing his knee. The guard and the scientist mutter something to each other. There is no way he’s getting the world record at this pace.

“...I don’t think we’re getting that record, guys.” Gordon whispers, tracing circles onto the floor absentmindedly. Should he restart? There are probably a lot more changes up ahead. Maybe he should use this run to figure out what he can and can’t do. “Let’s use this run to see how many of our exploits were broken by the remaster, and plan out the next run properly, sounds good?”

“who are you talking to?” the guard asks, crouching down next to Gordon. The whispers shift from incomprehensible chatter to greeting the guard. The guard squints. “...yooo you got some sort of ghost issue?”

Gordon turns to the guard, surprised that he can hear the chat. “Oh. No, that’s the chat. Wanna say hi?”

“nah. don’t want any of your uh- your weird chat ghosts.”

Gordon shrugs, then gets up and scans the room. Tommy and the other man can’t be too far away. Time to run around the starter area looking for them. Gordon takes off. The other two follow.

\---

It should be pretty easy to identify the key characters. Their AI was more advanced than normal and managed to interact with Gordon’s actions and words, so it was just a matter of talking to each scientist he found along the way. He runs up to two scientists in front of a broken computer. Same old base dialogue. This isn’t them. Next room-

“Mr. Freeman, watch out! There’s creatures!”

Well, we found Tommy. And a headcrab. Gordon reaches for his crowbar, but realises he doesn’t have it yet. The scientist and guard catch up.

“Tommy, have you seen the other scientist that was with you?” Gordon says, dodging the headcrab. “Where did he go?”

“You mean Dr.Coomer? He-”

Tommy’s sentence is cut in half by a blast. The headcrab’s body, several organs, and a plasma ball fly around the room. The scientist from before (I should really ask their names, thinks Gordon) cheers.

“Wha- Who did that?” Gordon whispers, looking around. The guard smirks. “Where did you even get that? There’s not supposed to be one of these-”

“thats my passport”

“That’s.” Gordon stops for a few seconds, staring into the guard’s eyes. “Alright. Ok. A question for another time.” He turns back to Tommy, foot tapping the floor impatiently. “Dr. Coomer’s his name? Where is he?”

Tommy glances at the organs bouncing around. The whispers chant his name, for some reason. “I think he’s at the… the panel? The one we were at when the test was happening!”

“Alright. Cool. I’ll be right back.” And with that, Gordon's off again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my tumblr is lj-neko! ^^  
> I don't really have anything to say haha. This was a bit of a weird chapter to write since it's hard to balance the fact that Gordon is zooming around at high speeds with me wanting to give the science team some screentime...


	3. I finally fixed the donation messages, chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The entire party's finally together!

The sound of the computer’s fans fills the small room. Open streamlabs, open Half Life, load save. PixelPoggers is now live.

Gordon’s head jolts up. He taps his feet, clenches and unclenches his hands, and checks if the controls are all fine. All good.

“Uhh. Welcome back everybody, for those who missed the last stream, uhh. Basically we’re not getting the record;” Gordon says, leaning against the same wall he was at when he last left off. “The remaster broke a ton of exploits, and the AI is acting up, too. But hey, I finally got around to fixing the donation messages, so now you guys can-”

[lordeMarkus has donated 5$!- FUCK YEAH]

“Yeah. Just- Just behave, or I’m putting them back, alright? Don’t go too crazy.” he says, then runs off again. Gordon turns a corner and meets up with the NPCs that were, apparently, the ‘party’ this game assigned him.

Gordon stares in terror as Dr. Coomer’s hair begins to burn at the tips. He’s standing an inch away from some sort of lazer beam, fiddling away with a control panel. The party doesn’t seem to mind.

“Alright, the terminal’s fixed, now if I just press-”

Gordon rushes in and pulls Dr.Coomer away from the lazer, panicking. “M-WH-Mind the lazer, Dr. Coomer!”

Dr. Coomer looks at Gordon, confusion plastered on his model’s face. God, these new face rigs are real good, Gordon thinks. “Now Gordon, it is important we stay calm. I am trying to-”

[5/5], the UI notifies. Gordon fights the instinct to zoom through the now open door by himself before Dr. Coomer can say another word. Instead, he zooms through the open door and drags the doctor with him before he can say another word. The party follows.

\---

Gordon hops through about five more corridors before putting Dr. Coomer back down. More lazers ahead… he could clear them no problem by himself, but the other party members will be a problem. The game will most likely be over if Gordon lets his party members die. “...Am I going to have to babysit the NPCs this whole game...?” Gordon whispers to himself. The doctor dusts his lab coat off and addresses Gordon.

“I- Gordon, that was uncalled for! I can walk fine by myself, you know!” he frowns, and the whispers boo Gordon.

Gordon sighs and hopes he doesn’t have to be polite to the NPC’s along with babysitting them. The rest of the party arrives, almost crashing into the two as they do. The scientist from before-

A name. Gordon needs a name. He rushes towards the scientist.

“Don’t say anything. I need to ask your name before I forget to again.” Gordon grabs him by the shoulders. “What is your name.”

“I…” The scientist squirms under Gordon’s grip. “I don’t remember, I uh… I took a beating to the head.”

Gordon starts tapping his foot impatiently. “No, don’t fuck around. What is your name. We don’t have time for this.”

The scientist scoffs. “Fine………hm.. Bubby.”

Bubby.

Gordon lets the scientist go. “...Bubby. Okay. Th-That’s your name. Sure.”

The whispers repeat it. Bubby, bubby, bubby. Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is everyone still here? Did everyone manage to keep up?” Gordon looks back up, and only sees three people. “...Where’s the guard?-”

“OOOOOWWWWWWWWWW”

The guard was sat directly on the way of a moving lazer. Gordon rushes, dragging him out of the way. The guard, surprisingly, has nothing but a little charred mark on his helmet.

“I- Jesus, how much HP did they give you?!?” Gordon asks, incredulous over the seemingly minimal amount of damage that the lazer did.

The guard wobbles a little, helmet sizzling. “hgmmnmg”

Oh god. Did his AI break. The AI broke, already, and Gordon hasn’t even gotten his crowbar yet-

The guard begins to sing, emitting a stream of colored, bright purple orbs.

“Wwwwhat the fuck is he doing,” Gordon lets out, still holding onto the guard’s left shoulder.

Dr. Coomer walks over. “...Is that normal?”

The chat is no help. The other NPCs are probably no help either. The AI broke and now the guard is spitting out purple orbs. Gordon jitters nervously. Is he going to have to restart the game this early?

“I can read this!” Tommy chimes up.

Gordon’s head snaps towards Tommy. “You can what? This- Those aren’t words,”

Tommy walks closer to the trail of quickly vanishing orbs, bringing a hand to his chin, squinting. “When it’s purple… like the evening, of a spring evening… then it means he’s okay!” Gordon doesn’t know whether this means that the guard is fine, or that Tommy’s AI also broke. “I… he’s okay.?”

The guard nods.

Gordon stands there for a second, processing what just happened. The orbs fade out completely, and the party turns to Gordon.

[jodiexists has donated 5$!- DUDE THE SPEEDRUN]

Right. They have to keep moving. Gordon can question the NPC's later. He turns back to the guard. “Can you run?” The guard nods again. Good. “Alright then… we have to be really careful, we don’t want to lose any party memb-”

“Last one to the elevator is a rotten egg!” Bubby shouts, zooming off to the end of the corridor.

“I.” Gordon stands there for a second. “...Or not, then! Bubby’s got the spirit! Cmon!” Gordon sprints, quickly meeting up with Bubby, followed by everyone else. He hits the elevator button, which crashes down, as usual.

Bubby starts shouting at him. “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?”

Gordon turns around. “Huh?”

The guard frowns. “what did you do??”

“Now Gordon, you may have just killed three innocent lives, but it’s important we stay calm!” says Dr. Coomer.

Oh. I guess I did, thinks Gordon. He never paid much mind to those little scripted events. Well, he’s not going to start now.

“Oh, who cares! We need to keep moving!”

Gordon jumps down the elevator shaft, and the party follows.


	4. We’re asking some questions, chat

The run was going surprisingly well, now. In the next couple of minutes of running around Black Mesa, Gordon noticed a few things. Firstly, that the party has no trouble keeping up, and even if you run off without them, they will catch up somehow. One time, Gordon thought he saw one of them teleport back to him in the corner of his vision. It’s probably that.

“Just like them minecraft dogs,” he chuckles to himself.

Secondly, the passport guy. He clearly has some weird game bending powers. Maybe the others do too and just don’t show it, but the guard uses them the most often. Either way, if Gordon can get info out of him on how to teleport around and get late-game equipment, that’ll be a lot of help.

Third. The NPCs were no standard AI. Almost all of their dialogue was brand new, with no repeating lines, and it adapted to the context of each situation… reasonably well. It wasn’t perfect, but ‘not that bad’ was about ten steps ahead of other AI. Coomer got stuck in his ‘Hello, Gordon!’s, the party didn’t really understand the danger in certain enemies, but overall… this was some really good AI.

Fourth, and this relates to the last point… It seemed like only this copy of the game was doing all of this. The remaster didn't actually implement a party feature and top notch AI. Which wasn’t frightening at all. Nope.

Gordon waits a few seconds for the party to catch up. He’s already killed the few headcrabs in this room, and it seems like a good place to sit down and talk to the party.

“Hello, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer greets him as he slides down to meet him, followed by everyone else. Gordon sits down. Or… he crouches down, which is about as good as he can get in this game. The party follows his cue.

That’s actually kind of funny, sometimes. Running around an alien infested facility, ignoring every plot point possible, with four other people following him like lost ducklings. What would happen if Gordon questioned them? Tried to get an explanation for why they follow Gordon, beside them just following their coding? Would they break? Are they advanced enough to understand the reality of their own existence?

Gordon dwells on that thought for a bit. Breaking NPCs is always funny, he thinks. But, right now, he has more important matters to discuss with them.

Gordon looks over to the guard, who is dragging a barrel to the group. He should probably ask his name, too.

“Hey- Can you stop messing with that barrel for a sec? I need to ask you something.” The barrel topples over, and the guard looks at Gordon with a blank face. “yea?”

“What’s your name?”

“benrey.”

“Benrey, huh.” Gordon starts to fiddle with the small pebbles that litter the floor, as his gaze shifts towards Bubby. “And you. You’re not fucking around? …’Bubby?’ “

Bubby looks over, glasses glinting. “Bubby!”

“Why the hell would anyone name you that?” Gordon sighs.

“It’s what I said when I was born!”

Gordon stutters. “Th.That just raises more questions! Who-What kind of naming is that? Just- What was the deal with your parents? Also, wouldn't the first noise someone makes after they’re born be like, crying or something?!”

“W- I have no parents!”

There is an uncomfortable moment of silence. Gordon chooses to ignore the fact that the barrel from before just vanished in the corner of his vision.

“Wh- You’re like, a test tube baby?”

“Well, duh!”

“Huh.” Gordon looks over to the pigeon by his side. There’s not supposed to be pigeons down here. It feels like the longer Gordon stays in this room, the more questions pop up in his mind. Test tube babies? Black Mesa does that? And what’s with the pigeon? Also, he forgot to ask the guard how he got that gun- And why did things sometimes spontaneously combust? And-

[paaxanthus has donated $5!- organic homegrown grandpas here!]

Gordon can’t help but wheeze at that.

“Who the hell said that?” Bubby shouts.

“That was, uh, a donation message. From someone in chat.” Wait. Is Gordon supposed to tell them this?

“...What chat, Mister Freeman?” Tommy says, after having fiddled with one of the guns this whole time. “Is- Is it the… the voices around you?”

Oh, right. They can all already hear chat. “Oh, yup! You got it, Tommy.”

“Can I say hi to them?”

“Oh! Yeah, go ahead!”

“Hi everyone,” Tommy says, not really knowing where to look when doing so. The whispers respond with a solid, uniform “HI TOMMY!”

...Then they repeat it for a good two minutes. The whispers can get real laggy sometimes. What was Gordon doing, again? He looks around the room. The whole party’s there, waiting. There are about four more pigeons. Still don’t know what the deal is with THAT.

“Welp... Guess it’s time to get moving! C’mon everyone! The faster we go, the quicker we can all go home!”

One by one, the party gets up and follows Gordon out of the room, guard slowly strolling behind everyone else.

He shoots the pigeons, then leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Just a little note on the update schedule, I plan on actively participating on ArtFight this year, so July's updates may be very late! Hope you understand! That's also why this chapter was a bit on the short side, I was preparing for ArtFight while writing it haha

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! My tumblr is lj-neko if you want to yell at me about this haha


End file.
